S.L.A. Marshall fact or fraud?

[TROUFION]

SLAM was first presented to me when I was in ROTC back in the early 90's as a fully factual sage on military matters, I like my peers read it all and absorbed it, taking it on board as truth. Yet as I've read and researched since then his 'facts' have been challenged. Challenged to the point that his 'facts' are actually fictions. SLAM's writings have been the bedrock of many military concepts and ideas. For instance his writing on marksmanship and shooting (or who shoots) under fire have been/are taught in many military schools. YET his research or lack there of has been entirely discredited. YET the books remain on the Marine Corps Commandants reading list.

Has anyone researched a definitive answer here? Was SLAM a charlatan? If so how have his teachings affected our (US) way of warfighting? Positive or negative? If he fabricated his facts was he still correct?

http://www.theppsc.org/Grossman/SLA_Marshall/Main.htm
-T

Note: Only The Soldiers Load and The Armed Forces Officer remain on the reading list. Men Against Fire does not.

[Jimbo]

The issue isn't necessarily about is he a charlatan. The issue is trying to figure out what is historic precedent and what is his opinion. Nobody has been able to dig up any notes from interviews. The concern tends to revolve around assertions he makes without any back-up evidence. I would take AMrshall with a grain of salt. Anybody that has few years of military experience is usually able to form their own opinions on what Marshall has written.

[Steve Blair]

I think the majority of SLAM's "research" has been discredited by others looking into the same areas (this relates to his propositions about the number of men who fire their weapons in combat). Does that mean he has NO value? Of course not. But it does mean that you should approach some of his ideas with suitable caution.

[Mondor]

I stopped reading his stuff and have discounted any work that lists his work as a reference since the early '90s. I think he had strong opinions and truly believed in the conclusions he presented. His methodology was flawed and his claims on the number of interviews conducted are unsupportable.

[Bowman]

I still read S L A M . The River and the Gauntlet ( Eighth Army 1950)
and Battles of the Monsoon has graced the book shelves for thirty years.

[Menning]

TRADOC produced a work as part of its historical monograph series on SLAM. It is called SLAM: The Influence of S.L.A. Marshall on the United States Army. It was written by F.D.G. Williams in 1994. Maybe it can answer your questions.

[ericmwalters]

In my recollection, SLAM's biggest critic was none other than Colonel David Hackworth, who described Marshall's research methods and skewing of data to fit preconceived notions in his book ABOUT FACE. Hackworth accompanied Marshall during his field data collection trips in Vietnam and grew very critical of his methods and work. I think a definitive examination of Marshall's conclusions across the entire body of his work in light of what we now know to be true has yet to be made widely available. One cannot discount everything he has written simply because we know he was wrong in certain quarters--it merely means we must treat his analysis all the more carefully.

Eric

[Steve Blair]

There have been others (researching WW II, Vietnam, and even the Civil War) who have discredited some of his theories (especially those dealing with the behavior of men under fire). A more recent critique (although not as direct as some) came from Peter Kindsvatter in "American Soldiers." Doubler's "Closing with the Enemy" is also critical. Both are from the University of Kansas Press' Modern War Studies series.

[wm]

There have been others (researching WW II, Vietnam, and even the Civil War) who have discredited some of his theories (especially those dealing with the behavior of men under fire). A more recent critique (although not as direct as some) came from Peter Kindsvatter in "American Soldiers." Doubler's "Closing with the Enemy" is also critical. Both are from the University of Kansas Press' Modern War Studies series.

A little grist for the mill about the applicability of SLA Marshall's work today.

Usually, when one extrapolates from the known past to the present or future, this is called arguing from analogy. That is, one draws inferences about how things will be in the future based on relelvant similarities to things in the past. However, a major piece of the portrayal must also show that the present case and the past case do not have too many relelvant dissimilarities.

Regardless of what we may make of the accuracy and veracity of Marshall's research, I submit that a very relevant dissimilarity exists. This relevant dissimilarity is such as to suggest that we ought not argue by analogy from Marshall's work at all. Today we have an all volunteer force. I suspect that what motivates the current all volunteer force is very different from what was at work in America's largely draft-fueled armies of WWI, WWII, Korean and Viet Nam. I suspect that a number of other values-related dissimilarities exist between the American fighting men and women of the 21st Century and those of the mid-20th Century. Each of these may be further reason not to draw analogous conclusions from Marshall's studies.

I am, as always, willing to be convinced otherwise.

[Steve Blair]

Obviously there is a dissimilarity between today's military and that of the draft era. But that wasn't the question at hand. The question centered on the accuracy of SLAM's research. Sources studying the same eras as SLAM have brought his findings into serious question.

The reason for this discussion relates to historical examinations of past combats, not necessarily the current application of his theories.

[marct]

Hi WM,

A little grist for the mill about the applicability of SLA Marshall's work today.

Usually, when one extrapolates from the known past to the present or future, this is called arguing from analogy. That is, one draws inferences about how things will be in the future based on relelvant similarities to things in the past. However, a major piece of the portrayal must also show that the present case and the past case do not have too many relelvant dissimilarities.

This is something that Anthropologists do all the time - reason by analogy. Personally, I think that Carlo Ginzburg's position on this is probably best: (paraphrasing) The interpretation that requires the fewest number of additional hypotheses is the most plausible (aka Ginzburg's Razor; note that this considers plausibility, not "truth"). I like the concept of "relevant dissimilarities" but, I have to ask, who decides relevance?

Marc

[wm]

I like the concept of "relevant dissimilarities" but, I have to ask, who decides relevance?

Marc,
I post this at the risk of being chastised again for being outside the scope of this thread's original point.

I suspect that relevance is decided by "them" . I further suspect that you know how "them" is. "Them" is that otherwise faceless, nameless group of authorities to whom we appeal whenever we don't really want to put our own necks, reputations, etc. on the line. Our parents invoked "them" all the time, and we probably do as well when we try to impart the hard lessons to our children. For example:
Child: "Why can't I drink that entire 2 liter bottle of Coke in one sitting?"
Parent: "You know, they say that Coke cleans rust off a car's chrome. Do you want that stuff swirling around in your stomach?"
"Them" is City Hall, as in "You can't fight City Hall."
"Them" includes the folks who create all those urban legends that we find discounted on the internet at Snopes or discredited on TV by the Myth Busters.
"Them" are all the otherwise unnamed popular sages who maintain the status quo of our collective "wisdom" (AKA lore, myhtology, popular science, etc.)

More seriously, your point about determining relevance applies to the similarities as well as the dissimilarities. I think that most arguments from analogy suffer from a form of circular reasoning--that is the arguers have already presupposed the conclusion to some degree and are therefore looking for similar cases to lend support to their positions. Arguing by analogy adds little new knowledge to our stock pile of truth. Instead, the technique entrenches what has passed for truth in the past.

Sorry for the rehashing of Humean skepticism. (I throw this last in as an attempt to bring my post back into the realm of History. David did write a compendious history of England, didn't he?)

[120mm]

There have been others (researching WW II, Vietnam, and even the Civil War) who have discredited some of his theories (especially those dealing with the behavior of men under fire). A more recent critique (although not as direct as some) came from Peter Kindsvatter in "American Soldiers." Doubler's "Closing with the Enemy" is also critical. Both are from the University of Kansas Press' Modern War Studies series.

I recently read Doubler's work. And I recommend it, highly. There is also a good work by a Russian author whose name completely escapes me that does a lot to debunk the myth that the Russians won in WWII due to mass manpower. In fact, the battles that the Russians won were often fought from a standpoint of INFERIOR material numbers and INFERIOR manpower to the Germans. In battles the Russians attempted to drown the Germans in materiel and manpower, the Germans generally won.

[selil]

Has anyone researched a definitive answer here? Was SLAM a charlatan? If so how have his teachings affected our (US) way of warfighting? Positive or negative? If he fabricated his facts was he still correct?

Though ancillary to my research I did quite a bit of research into this a while back. The paper is on my blog On criticism of “Violence: A micro-sociological theory by Randall Collins” http://selil.com/?p=193

People like Collins continue to use his research extensively. I couldn't get anybody to publish the paper (it isn't written that great) so it became a blog post.